In the hot seat

This week Lily-Rose and Oli have been in the hot seat as Grace Darling, reading her journal. They used some amazing words in their diaries, like perish and dreadful. Hopefully you will be able to hear a recording of them very soon! What questions would you ask them if you could?

What if?

What if a box arrived at school and what if it was from a museum? What could be in it? 

Should we open it? 

What if there were gloves in it? Why are they there? Should we put them on? 

What if the box contained a really old journal, that was written by Grace Darling's dad? Should we read it? 

  

Will we learn anything? 

A special visitor

 This morning we looked at different parts of a picture, that started to tell a story. We could only see small parts of it at a time, so that we could have a big think about what the picture was telling us. There was a lady, in old fashioned clothes, in what looked like a boat. 

Then we could see the sea, a lighthouse, then a shipwreck. The whole picture was the front of a book - about a lady called Grace Darling. But who was she?

This afternoon a special visitor came. Her name was Grace and she told us about her life. She said she liked games and so we played the yes/no game with her. Through this game we found out that there was a storm, a shipwreck and that people died. 

We then watched Grace's story about the shipwreck and how she rescued 9 people! Would you like to see her story too? Click here and you can!

An unusual place...

Somewhere in the world there is an unusual place. 

The room is circular and is roughly 6m across. Could you draw that using string and chalk?

In that place was a room and some stairs. They were unusual stairs. If you went up the stairs you came to a bedroom, with very little furniture. What could this place be? Who lived there? We had lots of great ideas.

Further up the stairs were more rooms. What was in them?

Somebody lived in this place, with their family. We were able to ask questions, but this person would only give yes/no answers. It took us a while to get the hang of it, but then we were on fire!

'Are you a boy?'     No

'Do you live here?'    Yes

'Do you have fun here?'  Yes, and no.

After a while ...

'Is it a lighthouse? Are you by the sea? Are you on the rocks?'

Yes

At night I light a candle and father finds oil.

 Why?

Outside the lighthouse a storm was brewing ...

then raging ...

into a full blown tempest.

The walls of the lighthouse were very strong. If they spoke, I wonder what they would say..

'The waves are crashing on the rocks.'

'I will stay strong.'

'The storm is terrifying ...'

'We will protect those inside!'

What questions do you want to ask now?

Amazing writing! (Part 1)

There is some amazing writing around the classroom at the moment! Some brilliant letters from nurses and soldiers in Scutari hospital and the diary of Florence Nightingale. They really capture what life was like in the war and the difference that Florence and her team of nurses made.

Scutari hospital

Here is what it may have sounded like in Scutari hospital in the Crimean War. 

The lost and found suitcase

When we found the old suitcase, we thought about how the owner of the case would feel about losing their suitcase, then we wondered what the suitcase would think or feel, if it could. Here are some of the suitcase's thoughts and feelings!

Letters home

The nurses and soldiers wrote letters home to their families about the awful conditions in Scutari hospital. They told of how the repugnant stench and filth were preventing the soldiers from getting better.

Luckily, as soon as they arrived the nurses started doing an amazing job of cleaning up and helping the soldiers get better, by cleaning their infected wounds. We interviewed some nurses and here's some of the things they told us:

'There are rats scuttling everywhere!'

'The foul smell hit my nose and made me feel sick.'

'There is only one real bed and that's used for realty sick soldiers!'

'There are about 100 soldiers lying on the floor in their own blood!'

It was an incredible interview!

Scutari hospital

The conditions in Scutari hospital were terrible. 

The nurses had to work very hard to clean it and make it safe for wounded soldiers,

Some of the soldiers had terrible wounds that weren't being cleaned and they were dying unnecessarily. 

It was exhausting work for the nurses and Florence was very strict. 

Read our 5 sentence challenge writing very soon.

Mystery solvers at work

We took the sash and the letter down to the ICT suite to research Florence and Scutari. We found lots to help us on our virtual learning pages.

We got a certificate for our learning!

We learned a lot by playing a game

The sash and the letter

We will share our learning with you very soon!

A mystery bag!

Mrs Martin found a mystery suitcase in the small hall and brought it in to us. We didn't know who it belonged to! Some of us thought we should open it, but others thought it might not be safe. We decided we should have a decision alley!

There were some great reasons why we should or should not open it, like

'It might be private!'

'There might be something dangerous inside!'

''There might be a name tag that will help us return it.'

At the end, the majority of us decided we should open the suitcase!

Before we did that, we thought about how the owner of the suitcase might feel. Then we wondered how the suitcase might be feeling! We had some great thoughts like

'I wish someone would open me because I haven't been opened for 100 years.'

'I have been waiting around for someone to find me.'

'I want to go back to my owner. Please help me.'

We decided that we would need protective gloves before we opened the case, just in case there was something in it that would hurt or fingers or skin.

Look what we found inside the suitcase!

A letter

Some old looking clothes

A lantern

A shawl

Some aprons

Evie thought this was a sash and showed us how to wear it 

There were some hats too.

Amalie read the letter. It was written many years ago and was from someone called Florence. We have a big mystery to solve!